Western Caribbean Zone
Encyclopedia
The Western Caribbean Zone is a historic region that formed in the late sixteenth century and includes the Caribbean coasts of Central America
, from Yucatán
in Mexico
to northern Colombia
, and also the islands west of Jamaica
. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish
failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers.
Unsubdued indigenous inhabitants of the region included some Maya
polities, and other chiefdom
s and egalitarian societies, especially in Belize
, eastern Honduras
, Nicaragua
, and Costa Rica
. In addition, the region was the refuge of several groups of runaway slaves, who formed independent settlements or intermixed with the indigenous societies. The combination of unsubdued indigenous people, outlaws (pirates in this case), and an absence of outside control made it similar in some aspects to the American West or the Wild West, as the western half of North America is often called.
Its long engagement with the English-speaking Caribbean made it an ideal conduit for trade from both the English colonies of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, but also North America, which had been trading in the zone since the eighteenth century at least. The relatively low population and strategic location attracted United States
based transportation companies to promote infrastructure projects from railroads to the Panama Canal in the zone, and conjointly with that to introduce large scale fruit production toward the end of the nineteenth century, often bringing in labor from the English-speaking Caribbean to assist.
Unique elements of the region, relative to the population of Central America in general, is the high percentage of persons of whole or partial African descent
, and its cultural connections to English and the English-speaking Caribbean through language and religion.
, where Spanish military activities were prominent in the first years of the sixteenth century. But, the Spanish abandoned their positions at Darien by 1520, leaving it, as well as the province of Veragua
on the Caribbean coast of Panama, in the hands of the indigenous peoples. This situation continued well into the eighteenth century. The government's occasional licenses given to ambitious Spaniards to conquer or settle these regions never resulted in any significant or long-lasting occupation, nor did attempts of missionaries to convert the indigenous inhabitants result in change.
The Spanish founded towns along the coast of modern day Venezuela
and Colombia
, notably, Santa Marta
in 1525 and Cartagena
. From these towns they expanded inland to the lands of the Muisca
in the highlands. They were less successful on several parts of the coast, where unconquered pockets remained, notably at the Rio de la Hacha and the Gulf of Urabá
.
Spanish successes in Central America took place mostly on the Pacific side of the isthmus, especially as the victorious Spanish and their Mexica
and Tlaxcalan allies entered Guatemala
in 1524 from the north. While the primary goal of the conquest was the Maya
kingdoms of the Guatemala highlands, and the Pipil, Lenca, and other kingdoms of Honduras and Nicaragua, most of their success occurred on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. A moderately wealthy Spanish colony, called the "Kingdom of Guatemala", was founded on the mining economy of that region, while not as prosperous as those of Peru or Mexico in gold exports supported Spanish towns and settlements, often at former Maya, Lenca or Pipil towns.
Farther south, attempts to subjugate the territory of modern day Costa Rica
were failures, although they did manage to capture slaves for labor elsewhere in the isthmus and outside it. There were numerous entradas authorized but all had to withdraw under stiff resistance. Towns that were founded in the 1560s were all destroyed by early seventeenth century attacks, especially led by the Talamacas, and as a result the Spanish only occupied the region around the town of Cartago
and the Nicoya Peninsula
. Attempts to reduce the area through missionary activity, mostly under the guidance of the Franciscans, also failed to produce much fruit, and further hostilities in the 1760s and 1780s ended that period.
The Spanish founded some towns on the Caribbean side of Central America, most notably Puerto de Caballos
, Trujillo, Gracias a Dios and Portobelo, as well as a significant inland town at San Pedro Sula
. But they failed to conquer the provinces of Taguzgalpa
and Tologalpa
in today’s northeast Honduras and western Nicaragua as well as much of the coast of Panamá
and Costa Rica
which also lay beyond their control, save a few key towns. They established reasonable control of the coastal lowlands of northern Yucatán after 1540, but the interior of Yucatán remained independent under the Itza
kingdom. The coastal regions on the south and southeast side of Yucatán, while nominally under Spanish control in the province of Verapaz, were ruled by missionaries and exercised considerable freedom of action under the Spanish administration.
For much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Spanish were content to allow the Caribbean side of Central America remain under loose control (as around the towns of Puerto Caballo, Trujillo or Portobello). They used the towns and the routes to them for transporting products of the Pacific side, including Peru to be shipped and exported to Spain.
to Panama
and then across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios, and later Portobello, ran away and formed independent communities in the mountains north of the city. The Spanish called such runaway slave communities cimarrons
. A large community with multiple settlements had developed there by 1550, initially headed by a king named Bayano
whose headquarters was in Darien
. After he was captured in 1558, other men succeeded him as leader.
Somewhat later, other groups formed especially drawing on the many slaves in Panama who were called up to carry silver across the isthmus of Panama from Panama to Nombre de Dios, the Atlantic port. By the 1560s there were two large communities, each with its own king, on both sides of the route. In 1572 the Panama Cimarrons
allied with the English privateer Sir Francis Drake
to try to take Nombre de Dios. In 1582, the cimarrons agreed to accept Spanish authority in exchange for their permanent freedom.
Other cimmaron communities formed in Nicaragua
and Honduras
, especially slaves fleeing the mines and transportation corridors. Thomas Gage
, the English bishop of Guatemala, noted several hundred escaped slaves in the early 1630s.
s, especially English ones, began to raid Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. Francis Drake
, one of the more successful, allied with the Cimarrons of Panama in 1572 and, with their assistance, stormed the city of Panama. In the subsequent years, both Dutch and English privateers linked with cimarrons to attack the trading towns of the Caribbean coast. In 1630, the English Providence Island Company
founded a colony on the island of that name
. They used it until the Spanish successfully counterattacked in 1641 to capture shipping and raid the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. Following the fall of Providence Island, the English transferred operations on the coast to Jamaica; many privateers began using the Cayman Islands
as a forward base for attacks on the isthmus.
or buccaneer
s, some of whom were formerly privateers, took over much of activity of the earlier privateers, especially during the Golden Age of Piracy
(1660–1720). Operating from bases within the Caribbean, such as Tortuga
and later Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, pirates regularly raided Spanish possessions and shipping along the whole of the Western Caribbean. They frequently stopped to re-supply at such places as Rio de la Hacha, Darien (which they also used as a base for raids on Panama or to cross to the Pacific) or the Miskito
areas.
When the European colonial powers began to suppress piracy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, colonial merchants often used the same havens to deliver goods from northern Europe to Spanish markets. The Spanish Crown's restrictive trade policies, granting of monopolies to favored domestic suppliers, and inability to produce consumer goods cheaply, made smuggling a major activity for English, Dutch and French merchants. The lucrative trade also enriched the indigenous groups of the area, but attracted frequent Spanish expeditions against them.
In the eighteenth century, ships from English colonies, but particularly Jamaica and also North America, regularly visited the Miskito Kingdom and Belize. Many of the commercial vessels were from Jamaica and New York
, but ships also came from New England
. In 1718 General Shute the governor of Massachusetts dispatched a warship to protect their interests during the Anglo-Spanish War.
" made an alliance with Great Britain in the late 1630s. They were joined around 1640 by the survivors of a rebellion on board a slave ship who wrecked the craft at Cape Gracias a Dios. The Miskito took the rebels in and intermarried with them, creating a mixed-race group called Miskitos-Zambos
. By the early eighteenth century this group had taken over the Mosquito Kingdom and were raiding far and wide throughout Central America. Capitalizing on a long term alliance with the English of Jamaica, they placed themselves under the protection of England and both prevented Spanish occupation of the area while allowing the English the security to found their colony in British Honduras
(Belize).
In the late seventeenth century, Englishmen began to settle on the coast, especially on the stretch from Nicaragua to the Yucatán. The settlements, while often scattered in small groups, were concentrated in the area of modern-day Belize. To provide labor for the logging industry, the British imported African slaves and created fairly dense settlement. A second concentration was in the Mosquito Kingdom
, as the British often called the eastern lowlands of Honduras and Nicaragua. Britain, through its positions in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which were more formally taken over and colonized in the second half of the eighteenth century, formed a military alliance with the Miskito. The Miskitos raided widely, reaching as far north as the Yucatán, and as far south as Panama. In 1746 Britain declared much of the area an informal protectorate, and in 1766 sent a governor who resided in Bluefields (Nicaragua) and answered to the governor of Jamaica.
to Roatán
in the Bay of Honduras. Many of these groups eventually found their way to the mainland as well, some retaining a distinct identity while others gradually blended into the existing population. Today the people of mixed African-indigenous descent are usually known by the name of Garifuna.
, they claimed the region as part of their respective national territories.
Great Britain claimed a protectorate status over the Miskitu, aided by their relatively dense settlement in Belize. Because of the insecure nature of the borders, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras all had to seek international adjudication to determine their Atlantic boundaries. In the aftermath, Britain lost its claim to coastal Nicaragua, but retained British Honduras
.
Although the British legacy was largely lost politically, the coastal regions kept some unique cultural characteristics. The population retained close cultural ties to the British West Indies, especially Jamaica, from which many of the people originally derived. The English language and Anglican Church were prominent along with Spanish and Catholic
identities. Protestant missionaries, such as the Moravians
in Nicaragua, were also active in the area. This identity as English speakers would be reinforced with the North American transportation and fruit producing concerns entered the region in the later nineteenth century.
, U. S. based adventurers who tried to intervene in the affairs of Central American republics. William Walker's short lived take over of Nicaragua in 1856 was the most famous and important of these private military adventurers.
, a major civil war broke out in Yucatán, pitting Mexican and Spanish settlers and the Mexican government against insurgent Mayas. The war was long and protracted, lasting until 1902, and created many refugees. These refugees, who were of a wide variety of origins, pushed into British Honduras and Honduras. In the case of British Honduras they came to form a significant portion of the population, and many were employed in the logging and other industries.
from the Atlantic to the Pacific side of Central America failed before US interests acquired the French project and lands in 1902. In constructing the canal, the US builders employed thousands of workers from the British Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Barbados. As a result of this immigration, an English-speaking community grew up in the Canal Zone and adjacent areas. It continues to this day.
in 1902.
The California Gold Rush
after 1849 created a very large demand for rapid, sea borne travel from the East Coast of the United States (as well as other parts of the world) and the Pacific, and Central America was a potentially usable route. As a result there were various attempts to build railroads across the isthmus. In 1850, Honduras began work, financed and overseen by largely United States capital, on the Inter-Ocean Railroad (Ferrocaril Interoceanico), though the work did not extend very far for many years.
In the 1870s, the Jamaica and the Bay Islands of Honduras began to export fruit, especially bananas
, to the U. S. market, and entrepreneurs like the Vaccaro Brothers of New Orleans and Lorenzo Dow Baker
of Boston hoped to capitalize on controlling shipping of bananas to US markets to make big profits. At the same time, Minor C. Keith, who had taken over his uncle Henry Meiggs' railroad project (founded in 1871) to build a railroad from the coast of Costa Rica to San Jose, its capital, decided to plant bananas along his rail lines, and in fact the banana export business saved his investment. As banana growing spread into Honduras
from the Bay Islands, too, the question of building railroads to increase areas able to participate in the international economy grew and a number of firms merged fruit production, railroad building and shipping into vertically integrated large scale concerns. By 1920 they were dominated by the United Fruit
(now Chiquita) and Standard Fruit
(now Dole).
The opening up of land, and the fact that the fruit companies paid higher than average wages soon drew thousands of immigrants to the banana producing regions, from the densely settled highland settlements of the Pacific side, and from other parts of the Americas. Among the immigrant workers, the companies often preferred workers from the English-speaking Caribbean primarily from Jamaica and Belize
since they could speak English. Local workers often resented this new, African-descended English speaking and largely Protestant element, and protested and struck against them.
The U. S. Companies relied heavily on connections with elites in the various countries of the region, as well as the willingness of the U. S. to intervene if the company's interests were threatened. This combination of local cooperation and imperialist intervention led the visiting American novelist O. Henry
, to declare "Anchuria" his name for Honduras, a "banana republic
" in 1904. This term has been widely applied to such combinations elsewhere in Central American and in the world
s) to produce clothing for the international market. Many of the shops are owned by Asian (especially Korea
n) concerns, though their target markets remain in North American.
In the countries of official Spanish language, the English speaking minorities have often been disparaged, particularly in Honduras, where the English speaking population is perceived as having been brought in my the fruit companies as a means of undercutting indigenous and mestizo landholding and labor. Their more ancient connections to English colonialism or attempted colonialism, as along the Miskito coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, has been combined with the perceptions that they are agents of North American/United States imperialism. This perception has led to occasionally racist depictions of the population the popular press and among politicians. These sentiments were often manifested by the deportation of workers who could be established as having originated in Belize or Jamaica (as well as other English speaking Caribbean colonies.
Beyond linguistic identities, the Western Caribbean often exhibited culinary habits associated with the English speaking Caribbean, or family structure characteristic of that region, such as a reluctance to enter into legal marriages, but instead, what is frequently called "common law
" marriages. The family structure that results from the marriage strategies of the English speaking Caribbean, often called the matrifocal family, was first described and identified by Nancie Gonzalez in her work on the Garifuna of Nicaragua and Belize.
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, from Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
to northern Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, and also the islands west of Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers.
Unsubdued indigenous inhabitants of the region included some Maya
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
polities, and other chiefdom
Chiefdom
A chiefdom is a political economy that organizes regional populations through a hierarchy of the chief.In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe or a band...
s and egalitarian societies, especially in Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
, eastern Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, and Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
. In addition, the region was the refuge of several groups of runaway slaves, who formed independent settlements or intermixed with the indigenous societies. The combination of unsubdued indigenous people, outlaws (pirates in this case), and an absence of outside control made it similar in some aspects to the American West or the Wild West, as the western half of North America is often called.
Its long engagement with the English-speaking Caribbean made it an ideal conduit for trade from both the English colonies of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, but also North America, which had been trading in the zone since the eighteenth century at least. The relatively low population and strategic location attracted United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
based transportation companies to promote infrastructure projects from railroads to the Panama Canal in the zone, and conjointly with that to introduce large scale fruit production toward the end of the nineteenth century, often bringing in labor from the English-speaking Caribbean to assist.
Unique elements of the region, relative to the population of Central America in general, is the high percentage of persons of whole or partial African descent
Afro Central American
The African descended population of the countries of Central America, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. One group was delivered largely in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to work in mines on the Pacific site of the area, and most lost their...
, and its cultural connections to English and the English-speaking Caribbean through language and religion.
Early Spanish settlement and conquest
The first Spanish settlements on the mainland of South America were at DarienSanta María la Antigua del Darién
Santa María la Antigua del Darién was a Spanish colonial town founded in 1510 by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, located in present-day Colombia approximately 40 miles south of Acandí...
, where Spanish military activities were prominent in the first years of the sixteenth century. But, the Spanish abandoned their positions at Darien by 1520, leaving it, as well as the province of Veragua
Veraguas Province
Veraguas is a province of Panama, located in the centre-west of the country. The capital is the city of Santiago de Veraguas. The province covers 10,677.2 km² and is divided into twelve districts.-History:...
on the Caribbean coast of Panama, in the hands of the indigenous peoples. This situation continued well into the eighteenth century. The government's occasional licenses given to ambitious Spaniards to conquer or settle these regions never resulted in any significant or long-lasting occupation, nor did attempts of missionaries to convert the indigenous inhabitants result in change.
The Spanish founded towns along the coast of modern day Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
and Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, notably, Santa Marta
Santa Marta
Santa Marta is the capital city of the Colombian department of Magdalena in the Caribbean Region. It was founded in July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conqueror Rodrigo de Bastidas, which makes it the oldest remaining city in Colombia...
in 1525 and Cartagena
Cartagena, Colombia
Cartagena de Indias , is a large Caribbean beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and capital of Bolívar Department...
. From these towns they expanded inland to the lands of the Muisca
Muisca
Muisca was the Chibcha-speaking tribe that formed the Muisca Confederation of the central highlands of present-day Colombia. They were encountered by the Spanish Empire in 1537, at the time of the conquest...
in the highlands. They were less successful on several parts of the coast, where unconquered pockets remained, notably at the Rio de la Hacha and the Gulf of Urabá
Gulf of Urabá
The Gulf of Urabá is a gulf on the northern coast of South America. It is part of the Caribbean Sea. It is a long narrow inlet in the coast of Colombia, close to the connection of the continent to the Isthmus of Panama. The town of Turbo lies at the southern end of the Gulf...
.
Spanish successes in Central America took place mostly on the Pacific side of the isthmus, especially as the victorious Spanish and their Mexica
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
and Tlaxcalan allies entered Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
in 1524 from the north. While the primary goal of the conquest was the Maya
Maya peoples
The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...
kingdoms of the Guatemala highlands, and the Pipil, Lenca, and other kingdoms of Honduras and Nicaragua, most of their success occurred on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. A moderately wealthy Spanish colony, called the "Kingdom of Guatemala", was founded on the mining economy of that region, while not as prosperous as those of Peru or Mexico in gold exports supported Spanish towns and settlements, often at former Maya, Lenca or Pipil towns.
Farther south, attempts to subjugate the territory of modern day Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
were failures, although they did manage to capture slaves for labor elsewhere in the isthmus and outside it. There were numerous entradas authorized but all had to withdraw under stiff resistance. Towns that were founded in the 1560s were all destroyed by early seventeenth century attacks, especially led by the Talamacas, and as a result the Spanish only occupied the region around the town of Cartago
Cartago, Costa Rica
- See also :* Cartago Agrarian Union Party* Provincial Integration Party Three* Cartago in Spanish...
and the Nicoya Peninsula
Nicoya Peninsula
The Nicoya Peninsula is a peninsula on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and lies in the Guanacaste Province in the north, and the Puntarenas Province in the south. It is located at . It varies from 19 to wide and is approximately long, and forms the largest peninsula in the country. It is known...
. Attempts to reduce the area through missionary activity, mostly under the guidance of the Franciscans, also failed to produce much fruit, and further hostilities in the 1760s and 1780s ended that period.
The Spanish founded some towns on the Caribbean side of Central America, most notably Puerto de Caballos
Puerto Cortés
-Geography:It is on the Caribbean Sea coast, north of San Pedro Sula and east of Omoa, at 15.85° N, 87.94° W. It has a natural bay.It is Honduras's main sea port and it is considered the most important seaport in Central America...
, Trujillo, Gracias a Dios and Portobelo, as well as a significant inland town at San Pedro Sula
San Pedro Sula
San Pedro Sula is a city in Honduras. It is located in the northwest corner of the country, in the Valle de Sula , about 60 km south of Puerto Cortés on the Caribbean. With an estimated population of 638,259 people in the main municipality, and 802,598 in its metro area , it is the second...
. But they failed to conquer the provinces of Taguzgalpa
Taguzgalpa
Taguzgalpa is a region or district located in northeastern Honduras, known historically through Spanish sources, and heir to a longer and richer archaeological tradition. It was usually called a "Province" in Spanish sources, and its internal social organization is unclear...
and Tologalpa
Tologalpa
One of two "provinces", the other being Taguzgalpa, mentioned in Spanish records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as lying on the Caribbean side of Central America. Tologalpa corresponded more or less to the northern part of modern day Nicaragua...
in today’s northeast Honduras and western Nicaragua as well as much of the coast of Panamá
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
and Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
which also lay beyond their control, save a few key towns. They established reasonable control of the coastal lowlands of northern Yucatán after 1540, but the interior of Yucatán remained independent under the Itza
Itza
The Itza are a Guatemalan ethnic group of Maya affiliation speaking the Itza' language. They inhabit the Petén department of Guatemala in and around the city of Flores on the Lake Petén Itzá.- Numbers of ethnic group members and Itza speakers :...
kingdom. The coastal regions on the south and southeast side of Yucatán, while nominally under Spanish control in the province of Verapaz, were ruled by missionaries and exercised considerable freedom of action under the Spanish administration.
For much of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Spanish were content to allow the Caribbean side of Central America remain under loose control (as around the towns of Puerto Caballo, Trujillo or Portobello). They used the towns and the routes to them for transporting products of the Pacific side, including Peru to be shipped and exported to Spain.
The African Runaways
By the mid-sixteenth century, slaves working the transportation routes which carried silver from PeruPeru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
to Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
and then across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios, and later Portobello, ran away and formed independent communities in the mountains north of the city. The Spanish called such runaway slave communities cimarrons
Cimarron people (Panama)
The Cimarrons or Cimarrones in Panama, were enslaved Africans who had escaped from their Spanish masters and lived together as outlaws. In the 1570s, they allied with Sir Francis Drake of England to defeat the Spanish conquest and plunder their riches....
. A large community with multiple settlements had developed there by 1550, initially headed by a king named Bayano
Bayano
Bayano, also known as Ballano or Vaino, was an African enslaved by Spaniards who led the biggest of the slave revolts of 16th century Panama. Captured from the Mandinka tribe in West Africa, it is alleged that he and his comrades were Muslim...
whose headquarters was in Darien
Darien
Darien is a masculine name; variants include Darian and Darion. Darien may refer to:-Panama:*Darién Gap, border area between Panama and Colombia*Darién National Park*Darién Province*Gulf of Darién*Santa María la Antigua del Darién, town founded in 1510...
. After he was captured in 1558, other men succeeded him as leader.
Somewhat later, other groups formed especially drawing on the many slaves in Panama who were called up to carry silver across the isthmus of Panama from Panama to Nombre de Dios, the Atlantic port. By the 1560s there were two large communities, each with its own king, on both sides of the route. In 1572 the Panama Cimarrons
Maroon (people)
Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...
allied with the English privateer Sir Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
to try to take Nombre de Dios. In 1582, the cimarrons agreed to accept Spanish authority in exchange for their permanent freedom.
Other cimmaron communities formed in Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
and Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
, especially slaves fleeing the mines and transportation corridors. Thomas Gage
Thomas Gage (clergyman)
Thomas Gage was an English clergyman.He was the son of the English Catholic gentleman John Gage, from 1622 a baronet, and his wife Margaret...
, the English bishop of Guatemala, noted several hundred escaped slaves in the early 1630s.
English and Dutch challenges
In the late sixteenth century, privateerPrivateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
s, especially English ones, began to raid Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
, one of the more successful, allied with the Cimarrons of Panama in 1572 and, with their assistance, stormed the city of Panama. In the subsequent years, both Dutch and English privateers linked with cimarrons to attack the trading towns of the Caribbean coast. In 1630, the English Providence Island Company
Providence Island Company
The Providence Company or Providence Island Company was an English chartered company founded in 1629 by a group of Puritans including Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick in order to settle Providence Island, off the Spanish Mosquito Coast of what became Nicaragua.Besides Lord Warwick, among the twenty...
founded a colony on the island of that name
Providencia Island
Isla de Providencia or Old Providence is a mountainous Caribbean island. Though it is closer to Nicaragua, it is part of the Archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, a department of Colombia, lying midway between Costa Rica and Jamaica...
. They used it until the Spanish successfully counterattacked in 1641 to capture shipping and raid the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. Following the fall of Providence Island, the English transferred operations on the coast to Jamaica; many privateers began using the Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
as a forward base for attacks on the isthmus.
Pirate havens and illicit commerce
PiratesPiracy in the Caribbean
] The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 16th century and died out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1690s until the 1720s...
or buccaneer
Buccaneer
The buccaneers were privateers who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the late 17th century.The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate...
s, some of whom were formerly privateers, took over much of activity of the earlier privateers, especially during the Golden Age of Piracy
Golden Age of Piracy
The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to one or more outbursts of piracy in maritime history of the early modern period. In its broadest accepted definition, the Golden Age of Piracy spans from the 1650s to the 1730s and covers three separate outbursts of piracy:the buccaneering...
(1660–1720). Operating from bases within the Caribbean, such as Tortuga
Tortuga
Tortuga is a Caribbean island that forms part of Haiti, off the northwest coast of Hispaniola. It constitutes the commune of Île de la Tortue in the Port-de-Paix arrondissement of the Nord-Ouest Department of Haiti. The island covers an area of 180 km² and its population was 25,936 at the...
and later Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, pirates regularly raided Spanish possessions and shipping along the whole of the Western Caribbean. They frequently stopped to re-supply at such places as Rio de la Hacha, Darien (which they also used as a base for raids on Panama or to cross to the Pacific) or the Miskito
Miskito
The Miskitos are a Native American ethnic group in Central America. A substantial number of them are mixed race, especially those in the northern end of their territory, where an African-Indigenous mixture was predominant. Their territory extends from Cape Camarón, Honduras, to Rio Grande,...
areas.
When the European colonial powers began to suppress piracy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, colonial merchants often used the same havens to deliver goods from northern Europe to Spanish markets. The Spanish Crown's restrictive trade policies, granting of monopolies to favored domestic suppliers, and inability to produce consumer goods cheaply, made smuggling a major activity for English, Dutch and French merchants. The lucrative trade also enriched the indigenous groups of the area, but attracted frequent Spanish expeditions against them.
In the eighteenth century, ships from English colonies, but particularly Jamaica and also North America, regularly visited the Miskito Kingdom and Belize. Many of the commercial vessels were from Jamaica and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, but ships also came from New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. In 1718 General Shute the governor of Massachusetts dispatched a warship to protect their interests during the Anglo-Spanish War.
The Miskito Kingdom and English settlements
The Miskito people, who had formed a "Kingdom of the MosquitosMosquito Coast
The Caribbean Mosquito Coast historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras, and part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests...
" made an alliance with Great Britain in the late 1630s. They were joined around 1640 by the survivors of a rebellion on board a slave ship who wrecked the craft at Cape Gracias a Dios. The Miskito took the rebels in and intermarried with them, creating a mixed-race group called Miskitos-Zambos
Miskito Sambu
The Miskito Sambu are a mixed-race population group occupying the Caribbean coast of Central America, focused on the region of the Honduras-Nicaragua border...
. By the early eighteenth century this group had taken over the Mosquito Kingdom and were raiding far and wide throughout Central America. Capitalizing on a long term alliance with the English of Jamaica, they placed themselves under the protection of England and both prevented Spanish occupation of the area while allowing the English the security to found their colony in British Honduras
British Honduras
British Honduras was a British colony that is now the independent nation of Belize.First colonised by Spaniards in the 17th century, the territory on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, became a British crown colony from 1862 until 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became...
(Belize).
In the late seventeenth century, Englishmen began to settle on the coast, especially on the stretch from Nicaragua to the Yucatán. The settlements, while often scattered in small groups, were concentrated in the area of modern-day Belize. To provide labor for the logging industry, the British imported African slaves and created fairly dense settlement. A second concentration was in the Mosquito Kingdom
Mosquito Coast
The Caribbean Mosquito Coast historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras, and part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests...
, as the British often called the eastern lowlands of Honduras and Nicaragua. Britain, through its positions in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which were more formally taken over and colonized in the second half of the eighteenth century, formed a military alliance with the Miskito. The Miskitos raided widely, reaching as far north as the Yucatán, and as far south as Panama. In 1746 Britain declared much of the area an informal protectorate, and in 1766 sent a governor who resided in Bluefields (Nicaragua) and answered to the governor of Jamaica.
The Garifuna
In the later eighteenth century, Caribbean Central America was often used as a place of exile. During the revolutionary wars of the later eighteenth century, the French deported African-descended militia units to Honduras, and in 1797 the British dispatched the so called “Black Caribs” of St VincentSaint Vincent (island)
Saint Vincent is a volcanic island in the Caribbean. It is the largest island of the chain called Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is located in the Caribbean Sea, between Saint Lucia and Grenada. It is composed of partially submerged volcanic mountains...
to Roatán
Roatán
Roatán, located between the islands of Útila and Guanaja, is the largest of Honduras' Bay Islands. The island was formerly known as Ruatan and Rattan...
in the Bay of Honduras. Many of these groups eventually found their way to the mainland as well, some retaining a distinct identity while others gradually blended into the existing population. Today the people of mixed African-indigenous descent are usually known by the name of Garifuna.
Independence
Spain had maintained a formal claim to the whole Caribbean coast of Central America since the sixteenth century, though it was not always able to enforce it. When the Central American countries attained their independence in the aftermath of the Mexican War of IndependenceMexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
, they claimed the region as part of their respective national territories.
Great Britain claimed a protectorate status over the Miskitu, aided by their relatively dense settlement in Belize. Because of the insecure nature of the borders, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras all had to seek international adjudication to determine their Atlantic boundaries. In the aftermath, Britain lost its claim to coastal Nicaragua, but retained British Honduras
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
.
Although the British legacy was largely lost politically, the coastal regions kept some unique cultural characteristics. The population retained close cultural ties to the British West Indies, especially Jamaica, from which many of the people originally derived. The English language and Anglican Church were prominent along with Spanish and Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
identities. Protestant missionaries, such as the Moravians
United Brethren
United Brethren may refer to:*Apostolic United Brethren, a Mormon fundamentalist group headquartered in Bluffdale, Utah*Church of the United Brethren in Christ, an evangelical Christian denomination based in Huntington, Indiana...
in Nicaragua, were also active in the area. This identity as English speakers would be reinforced with the North American transportation and fruit producing concerns entered the region in the later nineteenth century.
Filibusters
The Atlantic coast of Central America was also an ideal base for filibustersFilibuster (military)
A filibuster, or freebooter, is someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country to foment or support a revolution...
, U. S. based adventurers who tried to intervene in the affairs of Central American republics. William Walker's short lived take over of Nicaragua in 1856 was the most famous and important of these private military adventurers.
The Yucatán Caste War
In the mid-nineteenth century the Caste WarCaste War of Yucatán
The Caste War of Yucatán began with the revolt of native Maya people of Yucatán, Mexico against the population of European descent, called Yucatecos, who held political and economic control of the region. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco forces in the north-west of the Yucatán and the...
, a major civil war broke out in Yucatán, pitting Mexican and Spanish settlers and the Mexican government against insurgent Mayas. The war was long and protracted, lasting until 1902, and created many refugees. These refugees, who were of a wide variety of origins, pushed into British Honduras and Honduras. In the case of British Honduras they came to form a significant portion of the population, and many were employed in the logging and other industries.
Panama Canal
Several attempts to build a Panama CanalPanama Canal
The Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...
from the Atlantic to the Pacific side of Central America failed before US interests acquired the French project and lands in 1902. In constructing the canal, the US builders employed thousands of workers from the British Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Barbados. As a result of this immigration, an English-speaking community grew up in the Canal Zone and adjacent areas. It continues to this day.
Railroad Construction and the U. S. Fruit Companies
In the late nineteenth century, the Caribbean coast of Central America was a backwater, poorly developed and in many cases only partially controlled by its legal governments. Most of the Caribbean side of Costa Rica was under the control of Talamanca and other indigenous groups. Nicaragua and others had to content with the independent Miskito Kingdom until 1894. Mexico gained control of its portion of the Yucatán only following the end of the Caste WarCaste War of Yucatán
The Caste War of Yucatán began with the revolt of native Maya people of Yucatán, Mexico against the population of European descent, called Yucatecos, who held political and economic control of the region. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco forces in the north-west of the Yucatán and the...
in 1902.
The California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
after 1849 created a very large demand for rapid, sea borne travel from the East Coast of the United States (as well as other parts of the world) and the Pacific, and Central America was a potentially usable route. As a result there were various attempts to build railroads across the isthmus. In 1850, Honduras began work, financed and overseen by largely United States capital, on the Inter-Ocean Railroad (Ferrocaril Interoceanico), though the work did not extend very far for many years.
In the 1870s, the Jamaica and the Bay Islands of Honduras began to export fruit, especially bananas
Banana
Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....
, to the U. S. market, and entrepreneurs like the Vaccaro Brothers of New Orleans and Lorenzo Dow Baker
Lorenzo Dow Baker
Lorenzo Dow Baker was an American sailor, ship's captain and businessman whose voyage from the Orinoco to Jamaica and then to Philadelphia launched the modern banana production industry...
of Boston hoped to capitalize on controlling shipping of bananas to US markets to make big profits. At the same time, Minor C. Keith, who had taken over his uncle Henry Meiggs' railroad project (founded in 1871) to build a railroad from the coast of Costa Rica to San Jose, its capital, decided to plant bananas along his rail lines, and in fact the banana export business saved his investment. As banana growing spread into Honduras
Banana production in Honduras
Banana production in Honduras plays an important role in the Economy of Honduras. In 1992, the revenue generated from banana sales that year accounted to US$287 million and along with the coffee industry accounted for some 50% of exports. Honduras produced 861,000 tons of bananas in 1999...
from the Bay Islands, too, the question of building railroads to increase areas able to participate in the international economy grew and a number of firms merged fruit production, railroad building and shipping into vertically integrated large scale concerns. By 1920 they were dominated by the United Fruit
United Fruit Company
It had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the...
(now Chiquita) and Standard Fruit
Standard Fruit Company
Standard Fruit Company was established in the United States in 1924 by The Vaccaro Brothers. Its forerunner was started in 1899, when Sicilian immigrants Joseph, Luca and Felix Vaccaro, together with Salvador D'Antoni, began importing bananas to New Orleans from La Ceiba, Honduras...
(now Dole).
The opening up of land, and the fact that the fruit companies paid higher than average wages soon drew thousands of immigrants to the banana producing regions, from the densely settled highland settlements of the Pacific side, and from other parts of the Americas. Among the immigrant workers, the companies often preferred workers from the English-speaking Caribbean primarily from Jamaica and Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
since they could speak English. Local workers often resented this new, African-descended English speaking and largely Protestant element, and protested and struck against them.
The U. S. Companies relied heavily on connections with elites in the various countries of the region, as well as the willingness of the U. S. to intervene if the company's interests were threatened. This combination of local cooperation and imperialist intervention led the visiting American novelist O. Henry
O. Henry
O. Henry was the pen name of the American writer William Sydney Porter . O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.-Early life:...
, to declare "Anchuria" his name for Honduras, a "banana republic
Banana republic
In political science, the pejorative term Banana Republic denotes a politically unstable country dependent upon limited primary productions , which is ruled by a plutocracy, a small, self-elected, wealthy group who exploit the country by means of a politico-economic oligarchy...
" in 1904. This term has been widely applied to such combinations elsewhere in Central American and in the world
International Commerce
In the nineteenth century, North American concerns began the construction of railroads in much of Central America, which necessarily started on the contested zone of the Western Caribbean. In the process of this and the development of the fruit companies, North American and particularly New English contacts and influence continued. While the international engagement began with the fruit companies which dominated the economy of the Atlantic side of most Central American countries, in the 1970s they were joined by multi-national textile companies which established large scale workshops (maquiladoraMaquiladora
A maquiladora or maquila is a concept often referred to as an operation that involves manufacturing in a country that is not the client's and as such has an interesting duty or tariff treatment...
s) to produce clothing for the international market. Many of the shops are owned by Asian (especially Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
n) concerns, though their target markets remain in North American.
Cultural Characteristics
The Western Caribbean zone is a multicultural region, including populations of Spanish mestizo origin, indigenous groups, African-indigenous mixed race populations, Europeans and European Americans, and creole populations of African and mixed African-European origin. However, one of the characteristics of much of the region is the speaking of English, not only in Belize, a former English colony, but also as enclaved populations along the coast from Panama to Belize. In the case of the Belize and the Cayman Islands English is the official language, but there are significant English speaking majorities in the Bay Islands of Honduras.In the countries of official Spanish language, the English speaking minorities have often been disparaged, particularly in Honduras, where the English speaking population is perceived as having been brought in my the fruit companies as a means of undercutting indigenous and mestizo landholding and labor. Their more ancient connections to English colonialism or attempted colonialism, as along the Miskito coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, has been combined with the perceptions that they are agents of North American/United States imperialism. This perception has led to occasionally racist depictions of the population the popular press and among politicians. These sentiments were often manifested by the deportation of workers who could be established as having originated in Belize or Jamaica (as well as other English speaking Caribbean colonies.
Beyond linguistic identities, the Western Caribbean often exhibited culinary habits associated with the English speaking Caribbean, or family structure characteristic of that region, such as a reluctance to enter into legal marriages, but instead, what is frequently called "common law
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
" marriages. The family structure that results from the marriage strategies of the English speaking Caribbean, often called the matrifocal family, was first described and identified by Nancie Gonzalez in her work on the Garifuna of Nicaragua and Belize.